Quote :

"WARSAW, Poland - A railway worker who emerged from a 19-year coma woke to a radically altered Poland and thinks "the world is prettier now" than it was under communism, his wife said Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT Gertruda Grzebska, 63, said that for years she fed her husband Jan carefully with a spoon and moved his body to prevent bed sores. "For 19 years he did not move or say anything," Grzebska told The Associated Press by phone. "He tried to say things but it couldn't be understood. Sometimes we pretended we understood." "Now he spends his days sitting in a wheelchair and last weekend we took him out for a walk in his wheelchair," she said. "He was so amazed to see the colorful streets, the goods," she said. "He says the world is prettier now" than it was 19 years ago, when Poland was still under communist rule. "I could not talk or do anything, now it's much better," Jan Grzebski, 65, told in TVN24 Television in a weak but clear voice, lying in bed at his home in the northern city of Dzialdowo. "I wake up at 7 a.m. and I watch TV," he said, smiling slightly. Wojciech Pstragowski, a rehabilitation specialist, said Grzebski was shocked at the changes in Poland — especially its stores: "He remembered shelves filled with mustard and vinegar only" under communism. Poland shed communism in 1989 and has developed democracy and a market economy. Despite doctors' predictions that he would not live, his wife never gave up hope and took care of him at home. "I would fly into a rage every time someone would say that people like him should be euthanized, so they don't suffer," she told local daily Gazeta Dzialdowska. "I believed Janek would recover," she said, using an affectionate version of his name. "This is my great reward for all the care, faith and love," she told the AP, weeping. "He remembers everything that was going on around him," she said. "He talks about it and remembers the weddings of our children. He had fever around the time of the weddings, so he knew something big was taking place." In 1988, when Poland was still run by a communist government, Grzebski fell into a coma after sustaining head injuries as he was attaching two train carriages. Doctors also found cancer in his brain and said he would not live. Grzebski's wife took him home. Last October he fell sick with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized again, Grzebska said. Doctors' efforts led to the first signs of recovery. "He began to move and his speech was becoming clearer, although I was the only one to understand him," she said. Intensive rehabilitation brought more effects. "At the start, his speech was very unclear, now it is improving daily," said Pstragowski, who predicted his patient would soon walk. "I am sure that without the dedication of his wife, the patient would not have reached us in the (good) shape that he did.""

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070603/ap_on_re_eu/poland_out_of_coma

I think this is a good representation of how communism can't ever hold its own against a free market.

6/3/2007 9:32:20 PM

i read that in the paper... and was like damn just the amount of information he is going to take in in the next few months is incredible.

and even though the fall of communism has a lot to do with the incredible amount of info, this would also be true if someone went into a coma today in the US and woke after 19 years. just the new technologies and foods and architecture would be mind-boggling.

6/3/2007 9:35:44 PM

I too thought that was a neat story when I ready about it yesterday.

6/3/2007 9:36:17 PM

6/3/2007 9:37:41 PM

the warm and fuzzies were definitely felt upon reading this

6/3/2007 9:38:14 PM

Yeah, i'm sure capitalism had a good effect, but a guy suffering a traumatic brain injury and that hasn't been fully conscious for the past 19 years isn't the best person to be getting economic tips from.

6/3/2007 9:39:00 PM

I didn't say he should be writing an investigative pro/con of Wealth of Nations vs. The Communist Manifesto.

6/3/2007 9:41:05 PM

I didn't say you said he should be writing an investigative pro/con of Wealth of Nations vs. The Communist Manifesto.

6/3/2007 9:42:41 PM

thats some real life rip van winkle shit

6/3/2007 10:47:38 PM

Quote :

"moron: Yeah, i'm sure capitalism had a good effect, but a guy suffering a traumatic brain injury and that hasn't been fully conscious for the past 19 years isn't the best person to be getting economic tips from. Oeuvre: I didn't say he should be writing an investigative pro/con of Wealth of Nations vs. The Communist Manifesto."

ah but you did say that

Quote :

"Oeuvre this is a good representation of how communism can't ever hold its own against a free market."

all because a brain damaged guy coming out of a 20 year com says the "world is prettier"? Holy shit, dude, and you're a lawyer ??

btw, there's been more recent books on capitalist economic theory since Adam Smith. and no, i dont mean Ayn Rand, either.

6/3/2007 11:00:41 PM

what do you recommend?

6/3/2007 11:02:40 PM

^^ Oeuvre is a lawyer

6/3/2007 11:05:12 PM

^^

Free to Choose, Milton Friedman
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes

The Case Against Free Trade : GATT, NAFTA, and the Globalization of Corporate Power, (multiple essayists).
Class Warfare, Noam Chomsky
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, Noam Chomsky
Anarcho-Syndicalism, Rudolf Rocker

ought to be a good start.




[Edited on June 4, 2007 at 12:12 AM. Reason : ]

6/4/2007 12:11:07 AM

^^^

6/4/2007 12:47:53 AM

6/4/2007 1:04:30 AM

^ i thought of that too. good movie.

6/4/2007 1:21:24 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6715313.stm

Quote :

""What amazes me today is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and never stop moaning," said Mr Grzebski. "I've got nothing to complain about." "

6/4/2007 7:35:54 AM

^^ Me three! But had a rather sad ending for my tastes.

6/4/2007 7:44:52 AM

6/4/2007 9:31:14 AM

how long until someone makes the Schiavo comparison?

6/4/2007 8:50:10 PM

hey this is just like terri schiavo.


see, we should've let her live.

6/4/2007 9:02:53 PM

Now that's an awesome woman.

(I meant the wife in the story)

[Edited on June 5, 2007 at 4:35 PM. Reason : .]

6/5/2007 4:34:48 PM

^exactly

old girl feeds and takes care of you for 19 years while you're in a coma?

she's a keeper

6/5/2007 4:42:51 PM

in a crazy twist of irony, old man is found at a local warsaw pub smackin lips with a 20 year old.

6/5/2007 4:54:00 PM

I think it's a shame that people read this article and were like "see, communism was/is bad!!!" instead of "this is a pretty amazing story, what a loving wife..."

most soap box posters kinda suck.

6/5/2007 7:34:32 PM

^ Come on, whenever people wake up from a coma here in America, you know what the first newspaper articles are about? "Coma patient awakes too Coke Classic - wonders how New Coke roll-out went..." and shit like that. Someone waking up from a coma is not even national news, much less international. But someone honestly exhibiting naivety by asking "How did that communism thing turn out?" That's what we call a human interest story.

6/5/2007 9:23:46 PM

Quote :

"New Coke"

omf

6/6/2007 2:53:12 AM

except they didn't have coke in soviet dominated Poland. They had mustard and vinegar.

6/6/2007 8:34:26 AM

Quote :

"He remembers everything that was going on around him," she said. "He talks about it and remembers the weddings of our children. He had fever around the time of the weddings, so he knew something big was taking place.""

If he remembers, I wonder if he was actually conscience (meaning he would try to move and talk, but couldn't). Being "buried alive in your own skull" is a pretty scary thought.
http://www.slate.com/id/2149182/

6/7/2007 5:38:37 AM

I doubt it was like that. More likely, it was that odd state where you know stuff is going on around you, but you are so "out of it" that you are incapable of caring. I think we might call it being varying degrees of being asleep.

But if he was like you suggested, awake but incapable of moving, then I completely agree with you, he should bu suffering severe psychological damage from it all.

6/7/2007 8:44:10 AM

there are different degrees of coma

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale

[Edited on June 7, 2007 at 11:54 AM. Reason : not a rickroll]

6/7/2007 11:53:59 AM

I think I have a pretty good idea of what it was like:

Have you ever been sleeping soundly, and stuff happening around you (tv, radio, people talking) gets incorporated into your dreams? you are not awake, not even partially awake, but sleeping soundly and dreaming.

i am sure that's what it was like.

i have fallen asleep with the tv (cnn, bbc, discovery) one several times (a few times on purpose to induce great dreams), and i have:

1) travelled to the international space station
2) been a negotiator at an israeli-palestinian peace conference (i was actually questioning the palestinian side about why they didn't stop the suicide bombings!)

and a few others which i can't remember.

6/7/2007 2:40:23 PM

yeah, you can be so sure that's what's it's like.


Are liberals always this presumptuous?

6/7/2007 2:55:51 PM

"I think I have a pretty good idea of what it was like" != "so sure that's what's it's like"

And what would that have to do with him being a liberal or not? He might deserve to be trolled cause he can be an ass, but come on... that wasn't that bad at all.

[Edited on June 7, 2007 at 3:22 PM. Reason : sp]

6/7/2007 3:22:26 PM

But that's what Oeuvre brings to the table... prejudice, animosity, smearing, and divisive tactics.

After all, it is he who said this:

Quote :

"this guy is the biggest racist, nazi, terrorist sympathizing bastard out there... no wonder he supports Paul"

He doesn't deserve to be an American and reap the benefits of that society, if he can turn back and smear people like that all the time.

BTW, what was his previous username?

And also, how is the dream of being a pro-baseball player coming along?

6/7/2007 4:33:33 PM

Quote :

"most soap box posters kinda suck."

Wait...it was only on THIS thread that you came to that conclusion?

6/12/2007 6:08:47 PM